Presenter: BC Skeptics and Department of Psychology
Title: How Not to Test a Medium
Speaker: Dr. Ray Hyman, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, The University of Oregon
Date: 2:30 pm, 8 November 2001
Location: The Halpern Center, Simon Fraser University
Admission: Open to public. Free.

Ray Hyman, founding member of CSICOP's Executive Council and the world's leading scientific critic of parapsychology, has just completed a year as the Sigma Xi scientific honor society's Distinguished Traveling Lecturer. In this prestigious role, he delivered lectures on skeptical topics at more than a dozen universities across the US.

When Professor Gary Schwartz, formerly of Yale University and now at the University of Arizona Department of Psychology, announced that he had conducted scientifically controlled studies of several well-known mediums and was personally satisfied that there was acceptable evidence that these psychics were in fact contacting spirits of the dead, the popular press, many religious organizations, and several scientific periodicals took note. Having seen claims of this sort by other accomplished academics fall apart under close scrutiny in the past, skeptics immediately wanted to know if the controls in these tests were really as tight as claimed. As a leading authority on the "Barnum Effect," "sensory leakage," and other experimental confounds that have produced spurious support for mediumistic communication in the past, Ray Hyman set to work dissecting Schwartz's studies. Ray has debated Schwartz at the recent "Science and Religion" conference in Atlanta and at Schwartz's home campus in Arizona. Ray's detailed critique of these tests of big-name mediums is slated for an upcoming issue of the Skeptical Inquirer. Hear in advance of this publication why this latest "scientific proof" of psychic ability falls short like those of the past.

Ray Hyman's talk will be followed by a demonstration by Jerry Andrus of some of the most astounding optical illusions and close-up magic effects you are likely to see anywhere.